Technology Tips and Other Thoughts from JD

Thursday, May 9, 2013

May 2013 Tech Facilitator Meeting

Today’s meet: (This is worth looking at since Melissa took very good notes today!)

http://todaysmeet.com/wsfcstfmay13

Kevin Sherrill

June 4^th, Lenny Shad coming to talk about BYOD from Houston, TX—talking to principals about his nationally recognized program, works with cisco now
21/22 schools will be rolling out BYOD in the fall.

Speaking to principals in AM
Tech Facilitators could come in with principals in AM say from 8:00 – 10:00
If we do it in the PM, could bring some teachers who signed up for BYOD and thus be a modified Tech Facilitator/BYOD meeting

Betty Weycker—May 30^th retirement reception in here (3:00-5:00)
Send donations to Angie Wallace

Steven Anderson:

MLC’s on front page on Monday in the WS journal:

http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_081e2250-b6a4-11e2-a44e-0019bb30f31a.html

22 Schools and 365 teachers signed up

IWB camps this summer

Apply to present at inspire workshop: http://bit.ly/wsfcsinspire2013

At Morgan –Camp inspire—July 23-24

Smart Conference at Moore, July 17-18: propose a session for Smart: Propose a session here: http://bit.ly/wsfcssmart2013
More info in the TBT
Moodle going down On May 13^th at 6am

School Wires:

Great time of the year to spend time getting websites summer ready, update information, etc.
Provide summer activities, reading lists, calendar information
School main web sites want to post summer hours, and contact information, registration information, and other FAQ's
Do not delete any teacher websites!! , just make them inactive/hidden.

Here's some summer ideas: (Side note from John Downs)

http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/Page/1100 (summer enrichment K-6)

Summer reading for Middle School: http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/Domain/2167/2010_Summer_Reading_List_Middleschool.pdf

Here are some other summer reading lists-and some sites with reading list suggestions.

http://www.education-world.com/summer_reading/

Teacher vision-summer reading lists :

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/summer/reading/6099.html

Pacing Guides for Math (will give you an idea of topics for next year)
Math practice sites:

http://www.math.com/students/practice.html

Drivers Ed:

http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/domain/875

Other Summer Ideas:

http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/Page/56692

Media Cast:

need to clean up and will be important when they move to school net and need tagged correctly
AMTR reminder and Surplus pickup reminders

End of year Technical issues/Kevin

Fairly important that printers get plugged back into the same port
Mark them on the jacks so they stay on the same v-lan
Purchase new printers off the price list (Carla recommends)
Re-image computers every year? up to schools, contact Kevin if you need help
Discussion of KACE tickets and teachers calling into the service desk—Tech Facilitator is first line of defense
Two problems:

SD Notices from WSFCS needs to be edited (with the message to contact tech facilitators first instead of help desk)
Also on the email log-in there's a number there that teachers see :(
Kevin will remind principals that tech facilitators are first line of defense

Technology Updates:

Mobile phone roll out—sprint to Verizon
Galaxy phone users to be rolled out on June 1^st (schedule to come out—will have to come to central office
SMART phone contacts get synced from contacts in email
Need to make contact changes in email
(More details will be put in TBT this week)
How to deal with photos and things on old phones

Will be instructions this week, and password change information

May 28-31 will be rolling out new phones

Office 365:

MS live edu now---Live @edu was educational version of hot mail
Now migrating to office 365
Will come with sky drive, web-apps, link (webx kinda app) etc.
DOT has a a July 1^st deadline

"Cut over 1 and 2"

Cut over 1 --weekend of May 24^th
Minimum password 8 characters will be established
Full email address for web mail log on

Sometime between the 13^th and 24^th will be prompted for password change
Not asking students to change their passwords

Will force synchronization between our active directory and email
Can NOT use their same old password
Moving toward 90 day password change
Being pushed by finance for better, more secure passwords
Will send out more details on Friday and then we should notify teachers
Power School password will be a different password

Will use UID (will have to change every 90 days)

But, everything that uses AD will be the same password as usual
Front end login screen will look very different
Will still lock out after three strikes
Kevin to send us a screen shot of this new log in screen
To start we will be on "exchange 2010"

Cutover 2 –sometime July/August

Will then move into the 2013 of exchange (after being on 2010 for a certain period of time)
Then the login will look different again
and then your email will look different too
Skydrive and cloud storage—providing 25 GB of cloud storage
There is a little concern with security and legal issues (teachers stuff being on other servers)
Doesn’t seem to be any limitations on file types
Also security issues only as secure as Microsoft guarantees
May give students a log on for access to the office 365 apps
Notify teachers after Friday when TBT comes out
Email storage size goes from 10 GB to 25 GB
Though 25 MB attachment is largest attachment you can have and probably still be the same
Not sure sky drive will be here or not until attorney’s approve?

Virus update: Chris Corbin

Policy is in place to uninstall Trend micro from all machines
Chris showed us the process:

Endpoint uninstall--Core Protection Module will disappear at the bottom of the machine
They monitor as the process is running
Once it uninstalls, policy is in place to install the new
There have been some errors due to licensing issues

Wave #3--Chris will email another group of 13/14 schools who will start today
Once you get the email, "scare teachers" to bring in their laptops (also because end of year issues) especially windows 7 machines—only 120 days between time they activate against our windows licensing
Teachers do not need to do a gpupdate nor hard wire, should work on wireless
As long as they are connected (confirm wireless is working by logging in)
On Tech Facilitator web portal Chris put a doc

Tech Fac Webportal > Information for TF > Documents > General Info > Technical > SCEP Information Sheet

https://webportal.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/sites/Techfaq/Information%20for%20Technology%20Facilitators/Documents/Technical/General%20Information/SCEP%20Information%20Sheet.pdf

Cleanup process is phase 3 and 4

Image updates should be done in second week of June

Other end of year items:

Student home folders are purged as normal
Please spread the word to cleanup media (K drive) and yearbook drives (Y)
Power settings in windows 7:

Governed by workstation policy
Computer should never go to sleep
It is set to turn off the display after 1 hr and 30 mins
Set to never put to sleep when plugged in
Is policy being applied?
If it doesn't say never under sleep then policy is not being applied
In the new update the images will change that default value so it will not have to rely on policy
Could be something in the bios in those machines too
Update the drivers for the video card?
Could be an issue of lenovo changing a chip between the time DOT makes the image and lenovo returns the new machine
Might be solved by going into display adapters and updating drivers

Group Policies:

Need for some house cleaning?
Drive mappings done through group policy
With Implementation of WOMAC, some modification will be needed to deal with so many old machines, might help with log-in times
There is a plan in place to remove drive mapping
What about shortcuts that are published? They do slow down log in times

Some house cleaning—maybe remove some of the shortcuts?
Do an audit on your desktops, see if there are icons you don't need and let Chris know

So might remove shortcut policies? Maybe just for high schools?
Send Chris an email about the shortcut policies
Chris will publish "testing short cut" that will go to desktops of generic student accounts

PRINTERS

An efficient global way of getting printers on the machines Is Chris’ goal
Until that happens, your way if it works is fine—using IPprinter install, etc.
With the new method, printer file is on a shared location—Chris copies files from old way to the new way location
Phase 2 client gets pushed to machines via "utilities"—WOMAC (workstation management client)
Console: TRAC (technology resource assignment console)
You can use filter to find a machine for example, 516I4 (to see just media center machines)
You will have to type in the print server name
Might be some changes to print servers names at the start of next year (but they are all saved on a shared location now) and they can script those changes out.
Can also map a drive such as the year book to that same machines
To remove a printer, right click and “remove”
Can right click on the printer path and copy that and change the end
Can also right click on the name of the computer for more options there
WOMAC Client has ability to do profile sweeps (only number profiles) not teachers
WOMAC will be published, and will be in utilities location
Updates when they are needed will apply to everyone, will be no need to reinstall the application (since it's not an installed program like the PMC)
Utility will be published sometime next week and you can start using it
Can’t do multiple print assignments at one time –but you can just copy and paste the paths
Chris will send us an administrative guide

Start/run//?
/ip (for install printer)

Wireless with Kevin:

Carla focusing on 22 BYOD schools first
How are we handling wireless in the fall?

Rename MLC to wsfcs_public
New web filter this summer that will manage wireless
School issued devices will still operate on managed
BYOD users (not on domain) will browse to the public network, will prompt for active directory and depending on whether part of the BYOD group will let them on the wireless or not let them on

Other part—allowing teachers and admins bringing their on device (have not decided yet!)
Students can currently get on managed now, but that will change in fall unless members of the BYOD group
One of the reasons Kevin has let "it go" on users getting on now is so we can possibly qualify for the 2GB of data flow
If we press the threshold with having many users on now, might help us qualify
Web filter DOES affect students who log on now
Light speed is the name of the new web filter
The instruction/training piece and focus must be strong to go into this BYOD, thus why there is all the required training for teachers going on the BYOD

Debbie Harmon:

Power Source: email account is the user name
Debbie talked about the roles, etc for power source accounts, working through the individual issues
Being a current NCWISE users is the criteria for getting a power source account (based on their role too)
Teacher assistants have never been assigned ncwise accounts, for example.
Next year K-2 teachers will do the same thing they do this year with regard to entering grades
Troubleshoot certificate issues:

teachers have to get a proficient score
Also may try different browser or different browser on a different computer
Google Chrome is probably the recommended browser.
One particular module has difficulty with Internet Explorer (older versions).

Power Management Issues/Kevin:

With new leased laptops, don’t request new outlets unless a drop dead reason.
Can put in a ticket to Carla for Ethernet drops for new desktops—let Carla look at it—will be a summer project for her
Drops not active, add additional switches…every single school will be evaluated.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Technology Facilitator Meeting April 2013

News from Betty Weycker...

Race to the top meeting for Betty in GSO today at 10:00
Lenny Schad, from Houston ISD is going to come and spend a day with us about BYOD (Bring your own device)
Betty is trying to juggle to get principals and tech facilitators to hear his presentation.

Maybe in May on a Tuesday with principals or Thursday with Tech Facilitators
Another option would be a a day in May and we would meet in the afternoon
tough scheduling this with testing

Changes in staff:

Buddy Martin has taken a position in Greensboro and left
Offered a position for Kenny replacement who replaced Cory
Mike Nesser is still in the hospital (she will post his address tomorrow if you want to send him a card)
Anyone here for their first meeting?

Cheryl Jeffries, admin assistant for DOT

HOMEBASE refresher course (Power School FAQ)

1) Required items for Power School

Some LEA’s are going on May 1^st, we are a June 1^st district
For Data Managers it is June 1^st
August, all teachers will be on power school, which is why
down to 800 teachers who have not activated their accounts
SO, now she is sending out individually by school lists of teachers who have not registered for Power Source
At end of the week, she pushes out the remainder of the course
The rule is if person has current NCWISE account, all those people should get a registration. For power source
PRT’s all have different classifications so will depend if they have NCWISE access
After Monday, they will start accepting tickets for people who need new accounts.
Betty is sending emails with lists of teachers not registered to principals and tech facilitators…
"Nothing is optional, nothing is required" -- Betty
But in all seriousness, this is the only means of training that teachers will get

“if I were a specialists, I’d take these courses while the opportunity is there”—
Jackie Pierson—if a Media coordinator never had an account, then they will have to have a ticket

There will be a new wave of workshops after June 30^th
We are pushing it hard now, because teachers will come back in August and be overwhelmed then—at least encourage them to try and take some now
Power Source link on the technology department website.
Browser requirements for Power Source—not clear on that, try another machine, or another browser.
Different designs with different courses (some require different updates)

2) True North Logic: MCREL tool is being replaced—another required piece-- at the start of next year

3) 2014-2015, the TESTNAV (we can’t opt out of it)

Timeline:

June 1—Power School (gradebook)
Schoolnet—summer replacement for instruction content (learning Villages and the like)

video distribution—could be discovery ed or learn 360 type—they will be available at a cost and we can opt in.
Can we see it first in the summer, and provide it in the fall?

It’s possible we could move from Learn 360 to the school net if it includes discovery ed (it will depend on the contracts and when they are up and when we have to sign on the dotted line)

Open Class is the Moddle replacement

It’s an opportunity and may or may not switch next year?

A couple of GIVENS:

We are still going to have to do an AMTR (annual media and technology report)
Joan Proffitt will give us the particulars
Websites:

https://ncidp.nc.gov

AMTR:

https://schools.nc.gov/amtr

You first have to go to ncidp site--NCIDP has a special requirement
Joan has reactivated accounts and reset passwords—should have received an email from Joan.
Call service desk/submit a KACE ticket if you need to have password reset
If you didn’t receive an email then your password was not reset because it was still an active account
As of April 8^th, Joan has set up new tech facilitators and new Principals
When your password is reset, it does take 15 minutes for the password to take affect!
You will receive a lengthy letter in the next few days and how to subscribe to AMTR
When you subscribe to AMTR, (if you are new) you have to pick a role (follow the instructions in Joan’s letter!)
Joan will upload a folder to the webportal with the letter and FAQ’s--watch for that in the next week

AMTR FAQ’s

Can have more than one tech facilitator linked to a school and both can work on AMTR
Can also be linked to more than one school
Data is always live, and you can look at it and start updating, clicking SAVE at the end of each section
No difference made for leased computers
Equipment has to be in your building to be counted--though, repairs still considered "in your building"
Needs to be completed and signed off by principal before you leave for summer break
Don’t forget to count cafeteria computers
Student response systems are counted by remotes—each individual one—NOT each set
Questions about classroom solutions--Peggy
Do not count computers issues by health alliance (school nurses)
School psychologists laptops counted by central office not by your inventory
If you would like to use a Sample spreadsheet, e-mail Joan and she will send you a copy—helps keep up on inventory all year long

Betty, more on Power School

Most recent Power School--Identity Management

Teacher UID will be their login

10 digit UID used for MCREL—no rhyme or reason to the number
NCID is the NC number used for testing, will not be used for power school
WSFCS decided to create a third unique id—which is used for your payroll, e-docs, etc.
What is important is that teachers/ncwise users when they go to Power School, they will use that ten digit UID number
Data Managers will not have a list
UID—there is a list—a place you can go to find the number…

Let teachers know that’s what is coming

Took committee two years to come up with that determination—there was no common thread across the state—that is why the UID.
UID, is found in staff development where they go and check their credit
Betty will outline in TBT

MLC’s and BYOD’s: http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/mlc

MLC is a pen name by us for Mobile Learning Community
This past year we have had a controlled pilot with class sets of devices.

With the purpose to evaluate the infrastructure, but providing everyone with a device was not part of the plan to date

Taking the pilot information, the goal now is to allow students to bring their own device for schools who meet requirements
THIS does NOT mean Schools can buy whatever device they want—just because a kid can bring one—We will still have standards....Will we add to those standards?
Another goal is for teachers to be instructional coaches in these new situations
BYOD is not a 1:1 initiative--1:1 is: "I’m going to go out and buy everyone a device"
Discussion of Mooresville http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3757944

wealthy community with a poor tax base, Tax base of Iredell county is disadvantaged, and that’s why they have a 1:1, the money is there and it’s easy—also only 500 kids
They are making tremendous strides there.
Discipline improved (didn't have to go far)

There is however no way there will be a budget for every student in WS/FCS to have a device
The reason for the science laptops is not just to do the science tests, they had this transforming classrooms in mind
BYOD is not mandatory
April 19^th is the due date for the BYOD interest letter.

Two different options

Can be the entire school or a "collaborative group" in the school
Need to have some data about your school--Survey the students, how many students have devices?
Betty will not be supplementing the devices of kids who do not have devices
The key here and elsewhere like Mooresville is the training
Mooresville has been in school administrator’s magazine

Betty—The teacher from Rural Hall (Roseanne) —did not have a computer at home—so there is a whole spectrum of people who will volunteer for this
They need the three days of training with teachers to get them started in the right direction
There will be agreements in place that they will have to sign off on.

Must be part of the edmodo group for example.
Digital Citizenship:is the key to all of these—kids responsibility, they become the helpers and the best resource

Roseann created her own BYOD at Rural Hall (used iPhone when Galaxy Tablets would not work)
Parents, admins, tech facilitators have to buy into the concept
Lenny Schad when he comes in May—ask him these questions
In order to start in August, certain amount of summer training must be completed
Second wave will start later -- maybe in December
DOT will monitor the usage/infrastructure also will enforce CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act)

Snap chatting, and twitter and Instagram are social media that teenagers are using not Facebook (Snap chat is an IM sent for 8 seconds and then it is gone)

At the start of next year, students will have to register the devices they bring in and only they will be allowed to use wireless
Teachers—whole different story—how they deal with them accessing wireless with their own devices is secondary.

May have them register, but they would have different access.
Will they be able to BYOD or Buy their own and use them? Maybe, Maybe not

Time allocated for Tech Facilitators?

Betty hears more and more about zero time allocated for tech facilitator. She needs to repeat the survey asking us our allotted time for tech support.
Being in a lab all day not being able to provide support concerns Betty.
The wave of how we are used has gone up and down
"Teaching technology"—Betty has never been a proponent of that

There is no common core just for technology—it’s supposed to be integrated, a tool, a resource.—"It’s still one of Betty’s soapboxes".
It was said that tech facilitators should have 25% of their time for tech support

Steven Anderson

Question about kids accessing wireless now on their iPhone?

They had to turn user authentication on again for awhile but will turn off later-- probably change in the fall—they know it is happening.

Date for interest forms for BYOD is April 19^th—principal has to be trained in TLC (learning in a technology environment)

Workshop Registrations for Power Source Course: Steven clarified several points in a followup email:

Teachers will not be receiving 3.0 CEUs of credit. That would mean 30 hours of training. Teachers are only going to receive 6 courses in PowerSource which equals out to 6 hrs or 0.6 CUEs of credit. We have to list it at the higher amount to keep things consistent. Data mangers will be the only person in your building to receive the full 3.0 CEU amount. Other staff members (Office, Guidance, etc) may have more or less depending on their assigned courses. You can individually audit credits for each participant. Those instructions are found at the bottom of the document found at http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/powersourceworkshop

Remember, only give credits for courses equal to the number of certificates you receive. Certificates are available after a course is completed in PDF form so they can be saved electronically.

There has been some question about credits before June 30, 2013. If you have teachers that need the PowerSource credit for License Renewal you will have to create a second proposal that has an end date during this quarter. The reason for that is folks cannot evaluate before the end of the workshop. If they cannot (or do not) evaluate, they will not receive the credits. You can create a proposal for your school that has an end date of, say April 15, 2013. And as long as there is one person enrolled but not given credit, the workshop will stay open and teachers can evaluate. If you do this, add to the title some wording about it ending before June 30. If you need me to change any workshops you have already created, just send me an email. I am happy to do that.

They can train for as many courses as they want but are only pushing 6 courses.
How do I award credits for individual teachers in workshop registration system?
To edit an individual...

click on their name of the participant
fill out box for credit, total credits, Academic,Tech credits
mark box present

Only person who will get 30 is the data managers
Collecting certificates? Some schools created a folder on the share drive

Have them set up a folder on the shared drive and drop them in there
Coleen spoke about the end date--By June 25^th---If that's the case then can not finish the evaluation until after June 25^th, and that may be too close for comfort for the June 30th deadline

Other misc notes from Steven...

April 18^th open lab for PTA webmasters –8:00- 11:00
New apps for Power school, there will be a webinar
There is an ability to do a mobile version for all school websites (Talk to Steven about this if your school is interested)
IWB (interactive whiteboard) camps/Smart Camp—July 16-18^th at Moore elementary
Camp Inspire (active boards) will be at Morgan elementary –July 23-25

Kevin Sherrill:

Anti-virus—trend micro (was costing us $65,000/year) moving away from that to Microsoft endpoint which is part of the current MS licensing agreement

Chris Corbin: New Anti-Virus program coming to WS/FCS

Last web-x is not uploaded , so the following is new information for most
Project plan for changing out anti-virus (he emailed out this document?)
The per user MS license agreement gave us a big savings sharepoint licensing, Office and windows lisencing
MS System Center version of K box agent will updated
MS link—MS version of web x—can deploy and be on the new image—will allow web-x type activities for classroom
Forefront endpoint 2010, now called "MS system endpointprotection 2012", will replace trend micro—will be around June 1^st (when trend micro runs out)
CPM—little blue stop sign will be replaced with a little green box with a shield—so will be called green shield
It’s important to know the name "system center 2012 endpoint protection" (so as not to confuse with malware that may pop up)
There is nothing out there that provides 100% protection with out shutting down the performance of the computer
Malwarebytes is the backup
Does have real time protection and manual scans and scheduled scans
If green shield turns red, then virus protection is out of date, and you can right click and update
Preferred method is to delete files that are contaminated
Will be Installed as stand alone product

Phase 2) uninstall Core protection model Trend Micro

Chris will set up a policy on the core protection module
Will be done school by school to monitor progress
Will start seeing the blue stop sign for Trend Micro disappear
There may be a day or two lapse between the removal of old and the arrival of the new green shield—will be installed as a stand alone product
Will pull down updates from MS update sites
Possible issue in the settings of this new anti-virus—it is set to do an automatic scan scheduled at 2:00 am

SO, if computer is off, the next time it turns on it will run on the computer
Chris has not seen a change in performance while it’s scanning
if it starts to become a problem then he will disable it.
They did install on 8305 netvista with 256 MB of ram, no requirements for memory—so this is a good thing!

Chris will give us a schedule of when schools will be done
Teachers will need to bring laptops back in at some point

Leased Desktops:

have been arriving at your school, most have been delivered now
If you don’t have what you need, or more than what you were supposed to have, leave a note with Joan today (very few raised their hand with a problem)

Carla Miller—

Don't forget that the surplus spreadsheet is due on April 15th!
The spreadsheets of the laptops inventory for this school year...please take time to get that to her—She has only 17 returned (Only the part of the laptops that were above the cart laptops is what you have to add to)
Also, Create another tab in that same spreadsheet with the science laptops for the new desktops
Shoot email to Carla if you are drop short in any location.
(48 month lease) "LD", is the naming standard and the classroom container

Back to the New Anti-Virus...

Overall a ten minute operation between uninstall trend and install CPM
Question for Chris about informing teachers?

Chris will send a document with a screen shot of the new Core protection module for us to share

Image update this summer will take care of this update--it will be on the new images
Will also be in AICP

Other Issues:

If teachers see pop up that laptop needs activation every 120 days, windows 7—otherwise will have to re-image it.
Remind teachers that computers have to come back to the network and log-in
The laptop will not work if they don't bring in! --have to be reimaged after 123 days :(

New Printer Management coming yet again!

Starting next school year, gonna start new printing method
They just did finished setting up at central office
Printing through policies was "an epic failure" (chris' words)
Came up with current method—PMC and printer refresh
2^nd generation solution:
Drive maps were done through policy too
Another client based method similar to SSO--Client—called WOMAC--Work station management client
Also has profile sweep built into it.
Client sits on the machine—resides in the root of windows
Command line driven

Start/run

womac/ip

TRAC (technology resource assignment console) will replace the current PMC utility

You will type in your school code
Pulls up computer names
Click on the printer name (does not require it be turned on!)
It writes files to a file share
You will need to know what print server you are using:
Type out full path to the printer--such as\\340hprint….
Can remove everything then an add
Does not un-install any local drives, or any regular network drives
but you can Add y mapping for example, Y;\\340data01\516YB$
You can filter to look for devices
Can you do multiple machine assignments?, not at the moment ? but Chris is working on it.
Script running, when a computer is turned on, he is removing the install file and moving it to the install location for womac to read it
Should not be a whole lot of work to do at the start of the year.
Goal to have all assigned printers to go with womac
Potential Problem -- if printer locations change during the summer
We will do a couple of web-x’s and an admin guide
question? How do you know what print server you are on?

Print server will show up

At some point, they might possibly break down the printer servers so whole divisions don’t go down at the same time

Print server names might change at that point.

One way or another there has to be a server at schools to do imaging

Sprint to Verizon phone migration:

Principals and AP’s will be notified (about 900 in the district)
Cost of the phone program is ~$40,000 / month with e-rate support, is some of this an unnecessary cost?

Reminder about MS home use deal:

on the WS/FCS website go to:

Departments
Technology
Wsfcs Microsoft employee home use program
Web store—Kivuto is hosting this store
Products continually update
Office 365 is a web version of office and is sold on a subscription for web versions

No purpose in purchasing a subscription when they will have it in the fall

Can only purchase these products with a valid wsfcs email address
Majority of stuff costs $9.95
Can purchase each product 1 time

Wireless Update:

Will continue to grow that infrastructure
99% of connections are 100 MB connections
1 GB linked out of your building
Access points are wired to the network—on a 100 MB connection
Thus, 30 wireless laptops hitting that access point, could be 3-5 MB process in reality :(
So, eventually we need to get all access points connected to 1 GB ports and therefore need to add switches.
Will start surveying schools
All schools also share 1 GB shared on the data center
Ncmc provides us the bandwidth and hoping to get 2 GB by the fall
Schools applying for BYOD, will start surveying there first
They need to know if carts in rooms are not working well in one hallway for example--KACE ticket

Last Project update--Email changes:

Migration on our email—MS live edu been on more than year
Hosted through CSI now called encore technology group, they maintain some of our hosting
MS is mandating that they house all their web hosting

So we Have to be converted by June 24^th
We will No longer be "live on edu", now it will be OFFICE 365
There will be no difference in look
But, there will be more apps available
Live web versions of office products, cloud based applications that you could use including sky drive/online storage
Could get us out of H drive business
Could log into sky drive storage and get the stuff on their h drive (students too)
Could see a different staff email log in screen

Friday, March 22, 2013

Tech Facilitator Meeting March 2013

BYOD

http://todaysmeet.com/wsfcstfmar13--comments from today's meeting

Betty Weycker--Department of Technology Changes:

Cory McCloud—promoted WAN/LAN engineer
Kenny Flynn—network engineer now in the zone Cory vacated
Brian Cooper—Had been a temp, now he is on the service desk
Carla will hire another technical position

Mobile Learning Community (MLC):

Considering being allowed for the 2013-2014 school year
Chelsea from North been piloting the tablets and was to be here today, but could not make it
Feedback from pilot—it was controlled—technology provided the equipment
MLC is a "bring your own device"

There has been some confusion—people wanting to sign up thinking they will get “stuff”
to be clear—next year, there will not be "stuff" handed out

Schools that had laptops are saying they were much more pleased with the tools than the schools that had the tablets
The comfort level with the laptops was much greater than the tablets
Pilot required 30-40 hrs of training—from the 6 teachers in the pilot—the feeling was that the training was essential.

The training component is essential—it’s a non negotiable—if a school applies for the MLC next year, the training is a requirement, period!

Steven Anderson:

To not be the smartest person in the room anymore is a big change for teachers in 1 to 1 classroom--It’s a difficult transition
Marty Creech: If a teacher says they don’t have time for the 35/40 hours, then they probably are not right for the MLC program

Questions: how to make it more student authentic?
Building solid lessons first
Stress—the pedagogy change
Example: pulling questions out of students to solve a problem verses giving them a power point with the facts ("all the curriculum to get through")
It's a paradigm shift.
People are successful because they know how to teach/masters of their content/do problem based learning, etc.

How do you maintain the same level of instruction when not every kid will have a device?

Betty—the results of the pilot survey did show that the device made a difference in the difficulty of addressing those situations (more difficult with tablets than laptops)

Adam from NORTH: teachers are no longer expected to be the expert with technology but with the content. Students are the experts—Students may even write a guide or make a You-tube channel.

So what’s going to happen next year? (based on what we have learned from the Pilot)

Document coming out with an outline of what they expect including Strategic goals:

Digital literacy/resources
Online safety/ethical content—student responsibilities with technology from passwords to care of the devices, intellectual property, test taking, virus prevention and concerns about theft—all have to be discussed.

Teacher Considerations:

Sign offs for student/parent obligations
Instruction/pedagogy for every lesson has to be revisted
Teachers need to be part of edmodo for learning community support
No way we can manage/monitor the network if every kid brought in a device right off the bat
A question Betty gets often: “how can we provide bandwidth if teachers don’t have adequet bandwidth now”?—that is NOT a bandwidth issue but aging equipment issue
We have actually not peaked our bandwidth this year—We almost did with basketball games last week :)
Normal day 40-50% of our bandwidth is used.
MDM will register and monitor the devices (not "monitoring" what they are DOING, but who is and what is connecting.

Kevin has vendors coming in to help us monitor and will be in place before August

Interest letter to join MLC

Should be based on the whole school not individual teachers
Perhaps groups of teachers by grade level or interdisciplinary
They will not approve single teachers for a school—can’t invest so much for such a small group
This is not whole district going BYOD!
Another criteria—principal will have to sign off that they will provide to the tech facilitator the time to support the MLC program
Another sign off--parents must acknowledge is that we will not be expected to support the personal devices
Your support of devices “should” go away (may take two to three years—for devices to become the ownership of the students.
Betty believes teachers who are part of this should have the "classroom solution" in their room

sound becomes more important when collaborate groups is your predominate daily method
Preference should go to teachers with classroom solutions
Move to reinstate money from the state that was designated for technology (contact your representative)

Discussion of cuts to tech facilitator positions

Sometimes it comes down to choices in your schools

Timeframe for MLC implementation

Truly looking at August
Posting interest letter on Monday, and will need back April 19^th
Need to know how many schools are interested and time-frame (not making exception for training)
Training will be delivered some face to face/edmodo/moodle/summer training, starting in May.
They will wave starting points to 9 weeks or natural breaks (end of quarter or semester)

Setting the Tone:

Establish bottom lines/procedures
Create agreements
mistakes become teachable moments
There will be limitations on "operating systems" of devices brought in

Resources

Iste for students and teacher
Instructional technology page
Video: “Katy ISD” (leader in BYOD): http://youtu.be/LkiRWTJYPS0
Opportunity for him to come and talk with schools that are interested

would he be a value for us?

Katy independent school district--Lenny Schad

Kids that don’t have a device?

We have to prepare for it
Some schools may make additional purchases to address this issue
WFU laptops bridging the gaps?
Discussion have already happened with Principals/TAC/

Steven Anderson/resources:

Some great edmodo user groups--Steven is posting a list of the groups
Bit.ly/wsfcsusergroups

Edmodo new feature: After a group is created they automatically lock after two weeks--Steven is trying to get that undone for our district
Or you can join by url

Channel one was in the TBT this week and details will be re-posted next week. http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/channelone

Power School / Power Source

Notice went out to 1000 teachers--Betty sent the email in last 24 hrs
Have already pushed out to admin type folks in the schools
The process is:

each group has to have all their accounts activated before they push out the courses.

People are wanting to know why they don’t have the courses.

If individual teachers can’t find their emails, give them two weeks, then submit a ticket
Last group of teacher emails will go out by Monday
Later she will ask for anyone else who needs a power school account
They assign classes/sessions by the main role of the person
Principals will be able to see what courses their teachers have taken
Course dates are meaningless--don't worry about that
Betty can not mandate these courses, they are recommended
Teachers will have power teacher courses
Delivery of information will not take place any other way

Credit for Power School Courses:

We have CEU’s and AEOP (Office personnel credits)
They have agreed to use honor code—trust the seat time.
So for example, If you complete 8 courses and that translates to 10 hours then you would get 1 CEU
HR does not want your certificates
Betty will set up in staff development called power source
Every School has a designated staff development facilitator (that person might want to collect certificates—that’s the honor code)
You also might compile a spreadsheet with members of schools who have completed
Facilitator could mark a spreadsheet with the number of hours completed
Tell your teachers to keep up with courses—whether it is a physical copy or a pdf of it, and they will get up to 30 hours of technology credit
Completed by June 30^th?

Staff development has to be in by June 30^th for it to count on this cycle.
All that’s needed for the system is the total number they have earned
Can Teachers can take modules over again?—Yes, and there will be some additional user guides available (FAQ’s and some physical guides)

Homebase:

“Ready”: Students and resources from homebase
DPI has invested the money to Peasron to merge logo of Power school to Homebase

So on the Main screen of power school it will say Homebase
Homebase is still an online portal with resources for parents and students
Student information system is power school for admins/ power teacher for teachers/power parent for parents

Instructional Component: School net may replace learning village? Depends on the amount of content
Professional Development piece--No more MCREL!!—same rubric—the tool will be TRUE North Logic—evaluation will be available in August.
Moodle being replaced by “Open class”—will be available in the fall of next year—if it is free we will switch over—will abandon moodle (which we pay for now)
Test NAV: There is state testing (will definitely be on it) and quarter testing will be decided whether or not to switch from blue diamond or not?
SAS: We are NOT giving up SAS. (really helps us with data getting to EC program in ws/fcs)

SAS is a better performer than excel

Open education Resources

Video distribution—could revert back to discovery education, may come back to DPI, would still cost us but could be lower--Learn 360 may go away?

How is the build out going for Power School? They are building it live—working on a "play with" environment on our own.

Computers in Office:

Where did the two computers issued to offices go?

Did financial secretaries get them?—They are moving to a new financial program and might be best for that second machine to go there

Wave 3 of computer deployment for this year:

1705 desktops to replace student desktops that are the oldest—coming to your school
Tomorrow—you and the principal will receive the email stating how many computers we will receive based on a formul

based on how many machines we have (from computrace) and of which type—it’s a refreshing of 10% of those old net vistas
Also looked at student to computer ratio at schools

Betty weighted the two columns

What to do with the old machines?

it’s at your discretion

Betty Weycker: Is not in the business of replacing a lab for you—these new computers are designated as classroom machines

Originally district goal was for there to be four computers for student use in classrooms

Kevin Sherrill on the logistics of computer roll out:

They started shipping yesterday!
Monitors will come more quickly
CPU’s should be within two weeks (lenovo M-72’s)

Naming convention:

M516LD030501
Inventories: Leased Desktops:

You need to start planning the locations
Ethernet cables--Carla will be happy to send—next week's tech delivery—7 foot green cables

Carla Miller:

In January, she sent a spreadsheet with two tabs--1) science labs and 2) teacher or science teacher laptops.
Carla asked you to return with the names of those machines
USe that spreadsheet and create an additional tab with these desktops that we receive now.
For now you can email her the spreadsheet with the additional science and teacher laptops
To Label or not label leased machines?
Can not put fixed asset labels,
on the laptops they only could mark that one spot on the back where they have labeled with one number

Carla Miller/Spring Surplus pickup

Piedmont e-cycling—Bill will be coming to pick up items
Spreadsheet is on the webportal and the Deadline is April 15^th!!
Tech meeting the end of that week, talk to Carla if you have a problem getting it done by that date

Go to Tech Facilitator webportal:
Info for tech facilitators
Request for information
Choose your level
Drill into your folder
Spring 2013 surplus pickup
Check the form out
Fill it out
Save it
Check it back in (out arrow will disappear)

Only non working equipment
Not TV’s
Can do old smart boards (that do not work)
Tell Carla about rolling stands and email Carla and she will come and pick it up

Side notes:

Carla's team will come through to schools and look at places where there are less live drops
Be careful that tickets are secured to laptops when you send them in
Dibils discussion
IP phone sites—call manager update over spring break

Around April 1^st/2^nd voicemail will be turned off for a couple of days—asking ip phone users to purge old voicemails

Classroom Science rooms:

Trying to finish (204 classrooms) by the end of this month—Angie Wallace is scheduling this—knocking out 2/3 schools a day.
If anything was left undone, be sure to put a ticket in
Trying to get smaller jobs done in April
Smith Farm to be done in May

Weekly web-x still every Thursday (except tech facilitator days)

Strategic plan that impacts technology—

Focus on indicators of success—strategies to develop online access to homebase
Google form: http://bit.ly/wsfcstfform

groups to post the comments:

My Group: Overall, we think they are good.

Why not have the goal be 100% access? 85% student access

Will the site be mobile friendly? That may increase access

What additional course and what is the purpose of that one additional course listed in the strategy.